Five years after Sept. 11, the Democrats have suddenly become obsessed with truth. Their version of it.

Former President Bill Clinton is incensed with the ABC docudrama "The Path to 9/11," set to run Sunday night, that depicts his administration as cavalier in its disregard for the threats al-Qaeda posed, and too distracted by the Monica Lewinski affair in any case to act decisively. Clinton is concerned a TV dramatization will become the accepted version of history. Democrats in Congress threatened to wage regulatory jihad on ABC, and ABC went back into rewrite.

Well, yes, because it is filled with demonstrable lies

Some observers are shocked by the hypocrisy and the chilling effect this kind of behavior can have on the free discussion of ideas in the United States. But I welcome this development.

For starters, I assume this means that legions of Bush-haters will be showing up at Michael Moore’s house, demanding refund of the $8 each of them spent on his falsehood-studded distort-a-palooza, "Fahrenheit 911." At the time, outright lying and revisionism were being encouraged by the left, so it was reasonable for them to subsidize Moore’s tour de force in the genre. But they are attempting to move beyond that, and we should encourage them.

Uh, what falsehoods were they? And there is a massive, complete and total difference between a documentary and a show claiming to be based on a factual document. Michael Moore, who no one has proved who lied outright, made a movie based on his opinions. Which he says up front. The deceitful bastards who did the ABC show are saying their lies, demonstrable lies are true.

More importantly than any hotdog-addicted bomb thrower’s already discredited juvenile fantasy, I assume this means we can expect Democrats to hang up the old "Bush lied" canard. With their newfound interest in truth, they will have to finally admit the following. It is a long list, so please bear with me:

Canard? So yesterday, the Senate said there was no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda and that Saddam hated fundamentalists. Hmmm. What about Cheney saying we would be greated as liberators. Yeah, like the liberators of the Crimea in 1854.

George Bush was elected president of the United States. Twice.

No, he was appointed by the Supreme Court once.

All of the world’s major intelligence agencies, probably to include most agents in Saddam Hussein’s own Mukhabarat as well as his own generals, believed Iraq had an active WMD program. He did, as has been recently shown, have existing stockpiles of up to 700 chemical projectiles.

By who? Curt Weldon? There were no useful chemical weapons in Iraq in 2003. But there was plenty of RDX we didn't protect and has killed most of the US troops who have died in Iraq since then. It was evident that there was no chemical weapons as soon as coalition forces hit the main line and didn't find any. Or any in the depots. The US had two task forces which found nothing.

Iraq attempted to buy uranium in Niger. The outing of Valerie Plame was not a White House plot.

The first is widely regarded as an Italian secret service plot. The simple fact is that the French controls Niger's yellowcake and Iraq wasn't going to get any. We don't know why Ms. Plame was outed as a covert agent. All Armitage said was that she worked for the CIA, not that she was a NOC. We will find that out in a civil trial

Saddam was winning the sanctions war. He had throughly corrupted the United Nations food-for-oil program and Europe was pushing to eliminate the crumbling sanctions regime. Had Saddam been allowed to remain in power, the likelihood is that he would have resumed production and development of WMD.

Really? How? The US had an effective blocade on the main port and Jordan wasn't going to help him. If my aunt had a dick, she'd be my uncle. No one knows what Saddam could or would have done.

Oil is perhaps the world’s single most important strategic asset. Allowing control of the world’s greatest reserves to fall into the hands of a megalomaniac like Saddam would be disastrous. In today’s world, "no blood for oil" makes as much sense as "no blood for water."

As opposed to religious fanatics like those who run Saudi Arabia? Uh, we don't own Iraq and our attempt to is ending in disaster. He HAD control of the oil and sold it to keep his people happy. If you haven't noticed by now, Iraqis are a fractious bunch. Saddam had his hands full, with no restrictions on whom he could kill.

If "blood for oil" is a crime, someone needs to talk to the French about their deals with Saddam at the time they were squawking about their humanitarian concerns for the Iraqi people. The French would get the oil, Saddam would get all the blood he wanted.

Yes, those children who starved under the embargo don't really count, do they?

Saddam’s regime had contact with al-Qaeda, as his own documents attest. His regime had openly trained, financed and harbored terrorists for years. He attempted to assassinate a former United States president.

It was Vice-President Dick Cheney who asserted most strongly in public that Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda had an operational relationship.

In a television interview in September 2003, he said there was "a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s... al-Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained... the Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al-Qaeda organisation."

It was "clearly official policy" on the part of Iraq, he said.

Friday's report, issued by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, provides another definitive statement that that assertion is simply not true.

The Bush administration used Halliburton for military services under contracts signed by the Clinton administration.

And there is ample proof that there were problems then and they got worse over time

The Iraqi people welcomed the arrival of the Americans with cheers and invitations to tea. The Iraq and Afghan campaigns have given 50 million people democratically elected governments. The insurgencies there are terrorist actions that do not enjoy the support of the majority of the people.

Look, look, I know you're laughing, but this guy sent this to me, so.....

And a guerrilla war which has not stopped since March 2003. The players just changed but the game in the sandbox continues. The Iraqi government is a thugocracy, ruled by militias who conduct their business by ambush and death squad. There is no functioning government outsidethe Green Zone,

Ask the Brits and Canadians about Afghanistan. They're up to their asses in dope dealers and Taliban. Karzai is a dead man if he doesn't have his personal PSG with him. Democracy? The Taliban was showing off their weapons to Lara Logan this week, 10 miles from a US base. Democracy? A lot of folks want the Taliban back.

The approximately 3,000 American deaths suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the 10,000s of thousands of Iraqis killed primarily by insurgent attacks, pale compared to the deaths we could expect on both sides if the United States had to take on a rearmed Saddam. Those soldiers and civilians have died in furtherance of vital American interests.

Beside the deep offense that is to those wounded and killed, it's bullshit. Saddam was NEVER going to get a nuke. You think the Turks and Iranians would sit by? The Kuwaitis? Saddam's army of 2003 was a shell of the 1991 army. We took on an armed Saddam and beat him in four days. What American interest, installing Moqtada Sadr as President of Iraq? Because that's what's going to happen. Sistani has walked away from the Hakims and from peace.

While individual abuses have been committed and criminally prosecuted, the United States has not practiced torture, nor, beyond the isolated acts of depraved or highly stressed individuals, has the United States military engaged in war crimes. The deaths of civilians at the hands of the United States military, well below levels ever seen before in modern warfare, have been the result of honest mistakes or cynical use of human shields by our enemies.

Honest mistakes? Like secret prisons? Murdering detainees? There are SIX murder/ murder-rape trials of soldiers in Iraq, ALL of whom could be executed. This is more than an innocent mistake or an honest mistake. Abu Gharib and Gitmo are war crimes. The secret prisons are war crimes. None of that is permitted under the Geneva Conventions, none of it. You have one case where the commanding officer is refusing to testify in a hearing. I wonder why?

Our enemies are not freedom fighters. They are barbaric murderers, for whom torture, brutal execution and the purposeful murder of innocents are matters of policy.

Yes, like every guerrilla army. That's a guerrilla war. Doesn't make it right by any means, but it isn't unique?

They hate us because we exist, free non-Islamic societies that are more successful and powerful than their own. They don’t give a damn what we think or do, or how understanding of them we care to be, as long as we die.

Ah, a simple, bedshitting answer to a complex question.

Ever wonder why Saudis and Egyptians would plot to kill us? Is it because they hate the West? They dislike McDonalds?

No. They dislike the authoritarian governments they live in, once where people can be tortured at whim. They want us gone. They don't care how. Osama wants to run Saudi Arabia and sell us oil. We won't let him do so. Hmmm, Saudi Arabia has no power? Ok.

Our problem is not that Muslims hate us, but that we have made many of their lives worse when we didn't have to. Of course they hate us. We're killing them in Iraq and cheer Israel on as they destroy Lebanon, not Hezbollah, who came out OK, but Lebanon, Christians as well as Muslims.

Now, people want to bomb Iran. You don't have to think hard to wonder if it's the Fifth Crusade. It isn't, but people might draw that conclusion.